The musical efforts of many, from enthusiastic amateurs to professionals, throughout the history of computers have been gathered and archived by dedicated teams. Some of these are ongoing projects, as even today there’s new music being made for even the rarest platforms. Here’s a list of resources.

HVSC
The archive for all your Commodore 64 music. This is possibly the most complete archive available yet. Features over 36.000 SID files. From game music with their sound FX from the 80ties to contemporary SID releases, you can find it all there. Updated a few times a year.

SOASC=
An insanely ambitious project, two guys have converted the entire HVSC to MP3’s. The songs are available in various renditions, using different versions of the SID chip.

This is an exceptional entry here. “Hoot” is an emulator, supporting different platforms and chips. Support for chips like NEC’s PC-88 / PC-98 and Sharp’s X1 / X68000, along with various arcade systems.

Update [10.05.2009]: There’s been quite some discussion on what would be 8bit music and what not. Both Atari ST and Amiga have 8bit music chips, where the machines are technically 16bit. Therefore i’ve added both to the list. Feel free to express your view on this in the comments.

@Random: Thanks for the input! I’ve discussed it with some people, and noticed many people had different views on this. Still, after hearing several arguments, i decided to add them. As both chips for the ST and Amiga were 8bit, where the machines were 16bit.

Coolio :)
Since there’s now an Amiga part of this great article, perhaps adding the SOASC= equivalent for Amiga music, SOAMC=, is a good idea? http://www.paula8364.com/

The discussion about whether or not Amiga and Atari ST music should be in the list or not, for me it’s quite obvious. First of all, as you mention, the soundchips of those machines are 8bit. Second, I think that for many (or most) people reading this article, those two machines are of interest as well, so why not add them?

This brilliant post let us see there’s no 264 C= series music collection anywhere.
So, we started an interesting thread about something similar to HVSC/SIDPlay2 capable to run TED sound:
http://plus4world.powweb.com/forum/17873

@Alex, yes – 8bit peoples are doing great stuff, however – it’s not really an independent archive, rather a listing of their own productions, if i would add this one – i should add many more labels and artists. Thanks for the tip though! (also, great work on your site!)